


Next Train Home

by zigostia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drabble, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27335761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zigostia/pseuds/zigostia
Summary: Morning after.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 26
Kudos: 124





	Next Train Home

When John wakes up, the first thing he registers is the warm sensation across his skin, trickling down his spine like an epidural. It's raining out: the quiet patter strikes across the windowpanes like a thousand tiny hands begging for entrance. Of course it's raining out, it's London. When does it ever not rain.

He isn't quite bothered by it. Not right now. Right now, that warm honeyed sunshine is a shimmer on the nape of his neck, and he is swaddled and safe. He smiles and arches into it, feels it respond in turn as a quiet murmur, a shift, a subdued creak of the old mattress springs, a tightening of arms around him. There are arms around him. Wrapped tightly around his chest like he's precious cargo. A second pair of feet are lazily tangled around his, cold toes poking the back of his shins.

As John continues to lie in bed, savouring the moment, he feels reluctant to open his eyes. He hasn't had one of these in a while. He wonders, briefly, who it might be—he reaches back, grasps a tendril, a thread, of memory, of a smoky bar and laughing eyes and the bitter strike of whiskey across his tongue. He wonders if he remembers her name. If he even bothered to  _ remember  _ her name. He really hopes so, the morning afters are worse enough without the frantic grasping of (Sarah-Sonya-Samantha) synonyms. (There was a Sheryl, once. It felt like a deliberate quip from the heavens, toeing the tripwire.)

But he can't hide forever. He needs to—he needs to be polite. Find his clothes. The sheets feel like silken wool, sweetened luxury, on his bare legs and back. Or maybe that's just her skin, pressed up against him in a mimicry of lovers. She must know John didn't mean anything of it. He never does. It's an outlet, that's all it is. He refuses to think, for what. He needs to wake up, scour his memory in search of where he went, where he was, where he is, where he needs to go. Back to 221B, back to Sherlock Holmes. John's forever in his orbit.

So he opens his eyes, and gazes down.

At pale, slender, graceful fingers.

John's seen those fingers wrap around a gun. He's seen them caress the curves of a violin before coaxing a heartwrenching, furious voice from the strings. They've curled over teacup handles, flew over keyboards, jabbed at evidence with a stark, stiff index.

His next thought is, he's dreaming.

But he's never had one this starkly, this viscerally, this sharply  _ real.  _ He can see every knuckle on his fingers, every fibre of the Egyptian-wool bedsheets that Sherlock insisted upon when they went to the shop to replace the old ones that he'd burnt down the day before—he can taste the traces of whiskey on his sleep-sandy tongue. He can smell Sherlock, his conditioner, his sweat: elegant and harsh like cigarette butts in champagne. His heart is pounding so hard he can feel it in his fingertips.

Behind him, Sherlock stirs. John flinches. Lips on the nape of his neck. A shiver wracks through him like a thunderbolt.

Snatches of remembrance. It had been a celebration, he remembers now, a missing child found in a forest six miles from her home with a dog named Bones; they had dinner, drank wine, went to the bar, drank more wine, and some more, stronger substances on top of that. Laughing eyes—John rarely saw Sherlock's laughing eyes, and he wanted to kiss the crinkle on the centre of the bridge of his nose.

He never did. But he must have.

Flood like a forest fire in his head; they'd stumbled home, drunk on giggles and stolen stares. The bedsheets had felt scratchy on his oversensitized skin.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Behind him, Sherlock has stilled, but John knows him well enough—has lived with him long enough—to recognize all of his tells from just the slightest evenness of his breath. He's faking sleep, well enough to trick Ms. Hudson into leaving tea and homemade biscuits on the counter instead of waking him up, but not well enough for John. John can feel the tremors running through his arms like tiny fissures before an earthquake. He's waiting, that's what he's doing. He's waiting for John.

John knows Sherlock, and he knows the way he operates. He's assertive, he's stubborn, he's obstinate like an old, tired ass on his worst days, and his sulks are twice as worse. But John's a crackling, electric, eclectic burst of sparks on his worst days, and after months of pushing and pulling, Sherlock has learned to wait. And he waits, now, patient as told by the infinitesimal movement of his breaths.

John can get up. He can throw the blankets off of them, tear away from those arms like bursting free of a trap. He can deny, deny, deny, desires six feet under and still crawling up, nails caked with graveyard dirt. He can stutter, speak, plead drunken and guilty and unaware of his crime. He can apologize. He can gently pull himself free, and trod downstairs to make the two of them breakfast, and when Sherlock heads down after deeming it long enough as to not arouse suspicion, they will move on like none of this ever happened, and John will cradle it in his head as a supersaturated dream. And maybe this will happen again, and Sherlock will still wait, and John will be greeted with the crossroads forevermore. He can turn around to face the other, and Sherlock's eyes will be closed in a parody of slumber, and John can lean in and press his kiss against that crease on the middle of the bridge of his nose. He can wrap his arms around him in exchange, in equilibrium, and trace his mouth lower, to the side, brushing his cheekbones and darting at his ears, teasing, until Sherlock opens his eyes, bright and hazy with sleep, and they will finally meet in the middle.

John exhales, and feels Sherlock match the breath. He's waiting. He'll wait for as long as it takes, he tells John in the subtle stroking of his fingers along John's wrist.

John turns around. Sherlock's eyes are open. They're indecipherable, but John stares anyway.

A moment passes like a feather caught in resin.

John says, "Hi."

Wariness flickers across Sherlock's seaglass eyes and shutters just as fast. "Hello," he rumbles back. His arms are still holding John, hands steady on his shoulder blades.

"Lovely morning, 'innit?"

A frown, more confusion than negativity. "It's raining. I hate the rain."

"That's just because you're a princess. You can survive a bit of the damp without dying."

"Says the person who refuses to drink tea without a coaster."

"We have enough questionable substances on the coffee table, we don't need to add teastains to the list."

"Contrary to your argument, teastains shouldn't be so much of a big deal, then."

John sighs. "Your logic, as always, is fatally flawed."

Sherlock rolls his eyes, and John smiles. Sherlock doesn't retaliate with another quip. His eyes have settled back on John, steadily blinking as if he's counting them deliberately. He's trying his best to mask it, but John has burrowed his way into Sherlock's tells months and months ago, and the veiled question is clear and obvious.

John can roll out of bed. He can retreat and fall back from all the steps he's tread this far. He can say something about breakfast, about following up with Lestrade, about Ms. Hudson's morning tea and homemade biscuits, and Sherlock will respond dutifully and board off all the grey back to no-man's land. John thinks about how Sherlock gasped when John kissed him for the first time last night under the flickering halcyon streetlamps, surrounded by moths and junebugs. He thinks about how Sherlock plays the violin when he knows John is sad. He thinks about how warm Sherlock is pressed against him like this.

And John smiles, and ducks his head, and leans his lips against Sherlock's, barely touching, grazing. Waiting.

He waits for two more seconds before Sherlock's sigh floats through the air between them, and they meet in the middle.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a song by Lady Sol.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! I was in need of some plotless softness and scribbled this down as a result. If you're reading this, I hope you're doing well and staying safe. Much love <333


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